Samsung Hires CyanogenMod Founder–Steve Kondik

CyanogenMod (CM) is the most popular AOSP based custom ROM available for Android handsets and tablets out there. The CM team consists of more than 40 talented developers, who work hard in their free time, to add more features to CM, and to support more devices.

CyanogenMod was originally founded by Steve ‘Cyanogen’ Kondik. He had uploaded a test build of an AOSP ROM for the HTC G1, with a few tweaks, over at XDA forums. The reaction he got was overwhelming, and a few years later, CM now runs on more than 550k Android devices.

Well, now the good news is that Samsung has hired Steve Cyanogen’ Kondik. However, don’t get your hopes high on a CM running device from Samsung. Steve was probably hired because of his vast knowledge of the Android OS, its ecosystem and his programming skills.

Steve Kondik has also confirmed that he won’t be blogging about Samsung, especially in relation to CM.He does state that he will be working in Samsung to make Android more awesome. I guess we will see some of Steve’s work in the Galaxy S II successor, the Galaxy S III.

It’s ironic that at the beginning of this year, most of the manufacturers were against the work of the developers and custom ROMs. They were shipping their phones with an encrypted bootloader to prevent modding. But, this move from the manufacturers got a lot of negative response from the developers and the general consumers, alike. In the end, not only did they ease their stance on the bootloader policy, they have also started hiring these talented developers.